National Jewish Playwriting Contest Finals to Debut in Philadelphia at The Weitzman

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Barrymore Award-winner Leah Walton leads an all-Philly cast in excerpts directed by Illana Stein and Will Steinberger.

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The Jewish Plays Project (David Winitsky, Artistic Director) and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (Dan Samuels, Director of Public Programs) are thrilled to bring the Finals of the National Jewish Playwriting Contest to Philadelphia for the first time on Monday, June 29 at 7 pm. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts , tickets are free to the public and may be reserved here .

The stellar, all-Philly cast will include Ross Beschler (Hot House Member at Philly's Tony Award-winning Wilma Theater ), Barrymore Award-winner Leah Walton , Sabrina Profitt (Beautiful at Walnut Street, Tea for Three at Act II), Anna Faye Lieberman (Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at People's Light), Benjamin Behrend (Theatre Ariel, Theatre Exile), and Zoe Nebraska Feldman (The Wanderers at Lantern, Settlements at Interact)

Theatre Ariel , ( Jesse Bernstein , Artistic Director) Philadelphia's only professional theatre dedicated to telling stories of the Jewish experience, partnered with the JPP to oversee casting and performances of excerpts from plays. The evening will be directed by JPP Director of Artistic Programs Illana Stein and Philly-native and Director of Artistic Development at 2nd Stage Theater in New York, Will Steinberger .

The JPP, the nation's most influential development company for new Jewish plays, is proud to be partnering with the Weitzman, the Kaiserman JCC , Tribe 12 , Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel and Society Hill Synagogue to present its signature event on Independence Mall during the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of our country.

'Right now, we need positive and complex Jewish stories out in front of as audience members as we can,' said Mr. Winitsky, 'and these stunning new plays already making a difference. Now we need everyone to come out and help us choose which ones are the most important and the most compelling.'

This one-of-a-kind event is a combination of a TED Talk, a play reading and American Idol. Artistic Director David Winitsky will speak on the state of new Jewish drama, three plays are introduced by a video from the playwright, 20-minute excerpts are read by a group of stellar Philadelphia actors, and then the audience gets to vote on the National Winner.

The National Finals are the culmination of a 10-city, 1,000 audience member process which the JPP calls Artistic Democracy. The finalists for the National Jewish Playwriting Contest were selected from over 355 submissions from 32 states and 8 countries by ppanels of arts and Jewish luminaries in New York, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Boston, Hartford, Tel Aviv, Houston, Philadelphia and Toronto.

A Play about a Baby Carrot by Juliet Roll (she/her) - New York/Newton, MA

A grieving mother, over the 7 days of shiva, starts to see her child in a baby carrot.

Flatbush Lysistrata by Lila Rachel Becker (she/her) - Brooklyn/Washington, D.C.

Leah, Gali, and Shoshi gather at an axe-throwing parlor to plan a sex strike. They kibbitz, they scheme, they hurl axes. Also, there are a lot of interesting birds. A play about fundamentalism: what draws us to it and how women carve spaces for themselves within it.

Shura: The Mission of Identifying Life by Roee Joseph (he/him) - Tel Aviv

After October 7, a reservist assigned to identify the dead begins to write-quietly, obsessively-amid silence, violence, and routine. His documentation becomes an attempt to understand what it means to name the dead and remain among the living.

The winning play will be presented in a workshop reading at the Festival of New Jewish Plays in New York this fall. Past finalists and winners have gone on to be produced Off-Broadway, and at Atlantic (NYC), the Geffen (LA), the Alliance (Atlanta), Berkeley Rep (CA), and at dozens of theaters in the U.S., Israel, Canada and Mexico, playing for more than 140,000 audience members.

'Jewish playwrights have helped shape modern theater as we know it, and the Jewish Plays Project has been championing the next chapter of Jewish theater for years.' said Mr. Samuels . 'Hosting the National Playwriting Finals at The Weitzman during the height of Philadelphia's semiquin celebration is a powerful reminder that the Museum is a place where Jewish history is preserved AND cultivated. We couldn't be more excited.'

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/philadelphia/article/NATIONAL-JEWISH-PLAYWRITING-CONTEST-Finals-to-Make-Philadelphia-Debut-at-the-Weitzman-20260625)._